Thursday Briefing

Trump aides backpedaled on his Gaza plan

President Trump’s surprise proposal that the U.S. take over Gaza, driving nearly two million Palestinians out, shocked even senior officials at his own White House. Amid global alarm, top administration officials sought yesterday to walk back elements of Trump’s plan.

Several advisers said they expected his “long-term ownership” idea to die away quietly as its infeasibility became clearer to the president. By afternoon, that already seemed to be happening, and Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, tried to soften Trump’s positions on the relocation of Palestinians and the use of U.S. troops.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that Trump was proposing only to clear out and rebuild Gaza, not take it over. Steve Witkoff, the special envoy to the Middle East, told Republican senators behind closed doors that Trump “doesn’t want to put any U.S. troops on the ground, and he doesn’t want to spend any U.S. dollars at all” on Gaza, according to a senator.

Insiders said the administration had not made even basic efforts to examine whether the idea was plausible, and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel wasn’t told Trump would bring it up until just before their joint Tuesday news conference. Some experts said the plan was so outlandish that it had to be a negotiating tactic.

Reaction: Trump’s idea drew immediate opposition from the Arab world, including Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally. But it delighted many hard-right Israelis and some pro-Israel Americans. Palestinians in Gaza expressed a mixture of condemnation and confusion.

Hurdles: Turning Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East,” as Trump put it, would be time-consuming and extraordinarily costly. Here are more of the significant obstacles his plan would face. (For one thing, it would violate international law, experts said.)